The Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Hemispheric specialization is involved in every aspect of sensory, cognitive, and motor systems integration. Study of the corpus callosum, the bands of tissue uniting the brain's two hemispheres, is central to understanding neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and behavior. It also brings the tools of hemispheric specialization to a fundamental problem of cognitive neuroscience: modularity and intermodular communication. This book summarizes current research on the human corpus callosum. It also provides a comprehensive introduction to cognitive neuroscience. Rather than viewing the field through the various systems of the mind/brain such as perception, action, emotion, memory, language, and problem solving, it takes a case studies approach. Focusing on the central problem of simple reaction time, it examines the most basic possible sequence of perception-decision-action.

This is a book about speech and language. It is primarily intended for those interested in speech and its neurophysiological bases: phoneticians, linguists, educators, speech therapists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. Although speech and language are its central topic, it provides information about related topics as well (e.g. structure and functioning of the central nervous system, research methods in neuroscience, theories and models of speech production and perception, learning, and memory).

Music offers a unique opportunity to better understand the organization of the human brain. Like language, music exists in all human societies. Like language, music is a complex, rule-governed activity that seems specific to humans, and associated with a specific brain architecture. Yet unlike most other high-level functions of the human brain–and unlike language–music is a skil at which only a minority of people become proficient.